From equine facilitated education to safeguarding
Tracy Harper shares her passion
for improving lives
Throughout her career, Tracy Harper has operated with care and compassion. Before joining Smoothwall, she spent a decade at a specialist college, where they worked with horses to teach skills outside a traditional classroom setting. Tracy was searching for the next step in her career when she saw a job ad from the safeguarding technology used at the college. Now, she’s found a challenging yet rewarding experience as our Product Safeguarding Specialist.
A career with purpose
Why do you show up for work every day? Is it just a way to pay the bills, or something that fills you with real purpose? For Tracy Harper, care is at the heart of all she does.
Tracy has always had an interest in education and technology. Gaming and technology were a part of her life from as far back as she can remember, and her mum worked in education with children with special educational needs, so inspiration was sparked at a young age. Tracy has combined both these passions throughout her life, as a Support Worker and then Teacher with people with disabilities, the Vice Principal and Head of Safeguarding at a specialist college, and eventually as Safeguarding Specialist with Smoothwall.
Tracy joined the Smoothwall team just a few months ago but says it feels like longer - in the best way possible!
“It’s a testament to Smoothwall and the culture they’ve created. It’s hard to make new people feel welcome when you’re working remotely. But I’ve had the opposite experience here. I’ve met lots of people, and I feel like part of the team.”
How a horse can change a life
When Tracy left school, she didn’t jump straight into college or university. Her first role was in support work, and over six years, she worked her way up to Manager of a Day Centre for adults with disabilities. She then moved into education, becoming a Senior Teacher in a secure psychiatric hospital before finding her passion in a specialist further education college for adults with learning disabilities, initially as the MIS and Education Processes Specialist and then as the Vice Principal and Head of Safeguarding.
“It was an equine college, but it wasn’t about teaching horse riding. It was working with and around the horses to teach maths, English, teamwork, communication and independent living skills and so on. Individuals who couldn’t learn well in a traditional classroom environment were so much more motivated with the horses, which enabled them to learn and achieve. The progress you could see was incredible.”
Tracy set out to improve the equine college’s processes with education technology, including safeguarding, helping it transition from numerous paper-based systems to digital. Tracy has a strong belief that technology shouldn’t be introduced just for the sake of it but to improve people's lives. The college used three of the Smoothwall products, which sparked her interest in our organisation, alongside her years of being a safeguarding lead.
“I was happy at the equine college for a long time, but I started wanting to work in a place where I could positively affect a wider range of people. Smoothwall ticked that box for me. It works across hundreds of schools to keep kids safe. When I saw the job ad, I felt like it had been written for me.”
Coming from an organisation that utilised Smoothwall products, Tracy has seen the importance of our work firsthand. Smoothwall’s safeguarding monitoring software alerted the college to situations that could have led to the harm of young people, enabling the college to take preventative action to achieve a positive outcome. Tracy says working towards this purpose of keeping people safe is something everyone at Smoothwall is acutely aware of.
“Everybody here cares about what we’re doing. We care about improving our products, so we can improve - and even save - peoples’ lives.”